This Week In Quotes: Feb 4 – Feb 17 (Special Double Edition)

Clown Nose On, Clown Nose Off: That’s how Treacher described Jon Stewart’s very selective stance as to whether he was “just a comedian” and it therefore didn’t matter if he was saying nonsense or whether he was a sage outsider commentator on political affairs.

The global warmistas have a similar tactic. When asked to explain why their predictions keep failing, they will say “Well, the environment is a very complicated thing and of course we don’t have a perfect model of it yet.”

But when their core claims are challenged, they claim the exact opposite: They have a perfect model of everything, with all variables perfectly weighed in the equation (that’s why they know, to a moral certainty, that the sun has no more than a trivial effect on changing climate), so shut up, we got this, all of this.

Why does the left hate free speech? Because they don’t know how to talk about the substantive merits when they are challenged. Having submerged themselves in disciplining each other by denouncing any heretics in their midst, they find themselves overwhelmed and outnumbered in America, where there is vibrant debate about all sorts of things they don’t know how to begin to talk about. They resort to stomping their feet and shouting “shut up”… when they aren’t prissily imploring everyone to be “civil.” — Ann Althouse

(Obama) wasn’t elected to just sit there in the Oval Office, he was elected to lead. And if he won’t lead, we will. — John Boehner

I think the Muslim Brotherhood is not anything to be afraid of in the upcoming (Egyptian) political situation and the evolution I see as most likely. They will be subsumed in the overwhelming demonstration of desire for freedom and true democracy. — Jimmy Carter

I heard that pabulum Governor O’Malley was spewing down in Maryland. He doesn’t know what he is talking about. Come to New Jersey and listen to what I am saying rather than listening to his Democratic consultants. We are shining a bright light on what these things cost, and they cost a lot of money. Governor O’Malley calls that picking on public sector workers. I call that telling the people who are paying the bills the truth and not kissing up to every special interest you want to have on your side to get electoral success. — Chris Christie

Herman Cain’s shtick is a version of race minstrelsy where he performs “authentic negritude” as wish fulfillment for White Conservative fantasies. Like the fountain at Lourdes, Cain in his designated role as black Conservative mascot, absolves the White racial reactionaries at CPAC of their sins. This is a refined performance that Black Conservatives have perfected over many decades and centuries of practice. — Chauncey DeVega

Look, if Godzilla appeared on the Mall this afternoon, Al Gore would say it’s global warming, because the spores in the South Atlantic Ocean, you know, were. Look, everything is, it’s a religion. In a religion, everything is explicable. In science, you can actually deny or falsify a proposition with evidence. You find me a single piece of evidence that Al Gore would ever admit would contradict global warming and I’ll be surprised. — Charles Krauthammer

Reuters reports that Obama’s proposed budget would cut the deficit by $1.1 trillion over 10 years. Are you kidding me? We wouldn’t even come close to balancing the budget if we applied all those cuts in one year, but spread out over 10 years, they are insulting. Plus, many of these “cuts” would be solely the result of bringing troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. — David Limbaugh

Same principle applies to politics. Dance with the people that brung you. But this doesn’t seem to be what’s going on in the Republican Party. The people that brung us embarrass us. Some of the people that brung us embarrass us, seems to be the message. We gotta deemphasize this. We gotta stop talking about the borders and immigration, that’s racist. We gotta stop talking about social issues, that’s abortion, wives don’t like it, we don’t wanna get henpecked at home, whatever it is. — Rush Limbaugh

The minimum projected budget deficit for the next 10 years is 2.9% of GDP in 2018. Now, 2.9% of GDP is–just barely–sustainable; it’s about the maximum deficit that we can run and not drive the government’s fiscal ship onto the rocks. But when that’s the best you can do–when you’re only getting that low at the tip-top of the business/tax cycle–you’re in deep trouble. What happens when there’s another slowdown? — Megan McArdle

This is not the road to national greatness, it is the road to ruin,” Palin said of the growth in government spending, budget deficits, joblessness and housing foreclosures under Obama. “The federal government is spending too much, borrowing too much, growing and controlling too much. — Sarah Palin

In 2008, as Slate reporter Sarah Topol noted, a study by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights reported that 83 percent of women experienced harassment – and that 98 percent of foreign women visitors did. And 62 percent of men admitted to perpetrating it. Living in the United States, I take for granted my ability to walk unmolested in the street. I don’t believe this could have happened here. And the idea that such a horror could take place in the midst not of pervasive violence but of celebration is especially shocking. — Alexandra Petri

To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you’re fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama’s cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts. He let you down. On the critical issue of America’s fiscal crisis, he represents no hope and no change. Just the same old Washington politics he once promised to end. — Andrew Sullivan

Poverty in Egypt, or anywhere else, is not very difficult to explain. There are three basic causes: People are poor because they cannot produce anything highly valued by others. They can produce things highly valued by others but are hampered or prevented from doing so. Or, they volunteer to be poor. — Walter Williams